Massive kudos, then, to Wolf Alice. But before we go it’s worth pondering what the point of the prize even is. As Jude Rogers noted in these pages recently, there were seven Top 10 albums on the shortlist and six artists who have been nominated before – if the prize is designed to “help introduce new albums from a range of music genres to a wider audience”, is is simply not fulfilling that remit well enough. She argued as much on Radio 4’s Today programme this morning too.

The industry obviously wants to prop up the album as a format, as a younger generation dissects them into playlists, and that’s fine – the aforementioned King Krule album is a reminder of the LP’s power. Truly exceptional popular records should of course be nominated. But the Mercury’s audience is essentially passionate record dweebs like me – their promotion is likely to sell very few extra Noel Gallagher albums, but a lot more by Sons of Kemet. Let’s hope for a bit more diversity and risk-taking from the prize chaired by the head of music at Radio 2 and 6 Music, OH WAIT.

Well, maybe now is not the time for snark. Wolf Alice will hopefully break into the consciousness of a few more people who weren’t aware of their work, and that is reason enough for now. Congratulations to them – can someone find them those Jagerbombs?

So the bookies were foiled yet again – none of the top three favourites won. Instead, the judges went for a band who prove they have really universal appeal: soulful, romantic, angry, laconic, they have ended up in the playlists and record collections of a really wide set of music lovers. You only need to see the almost religious fervour of their millennial fans at gigs – who, like them, have the radical anti-tribalism of having grown up with access to any and all music – to acknowledge how powerful they can be.

And the winner is... Wolf Alice!

Wolf Alice

It’s Wolf Alice! The quartet have alighted on a really passionate and yet supremely cool version of British rock’n’roll, that shrugs at what a band is meant to be. Are they dream-pop, punk, indie-rock? Zero fucks are given. They just get on with being beautiful, energetic, vital.

Ellie Rowsell looks out of breath and overwhelmed: “This means so much to pick this up with my three best friends!” Her bandmate Theo Ellis takes over, reminiscing about how a record company exec knocked them back saying: “’You lot don’t look like a band at all - all your songs sound different, you don’t look like each other.’ But here we are - so fuck you!” He asks for a Jägerbomb before heading back to the stage for another rendition of Don’t Delete the Kisses.

Wolf Alice are the final live performance tonight, playing Don’t Delete the Kisses: a frankly magical song with sprechgesang lyrics from a barefoot Ellie Rowsell (perhaps bringing touches of cult post-punkers Life Without Buildings). Its an anthem for hipsters in love: trying to be aloof but letting your true feelings stumble out in a rush of feeling. Still one of the most unique songs released by a British guitar act in recent years.

Energy gang! Novelist does Nov Wait Stop Wait, his club heater that is almost like a bit of UKG toasting. It’s a bit of a lazy performance to be honest, his mic kept well below the vocal his DJ is playing - but his shoutout to his mum and his back and forth with the audience seems to fire him up for a final salvo of the chorus. A reminder that grime can still shake down a crowd, even if it’s been overtaken by the sensuality of Afro-swing in the last couple of years.

King Krule performs Dum Surfer, his brilliant, stumbling booze odyssey – “We’re mashed, we’re mashed ... I need another slash” – set to choppy post-punk and a guitar solo that wanders around trying to find its mates. His sahf Lahndon delivery works so beautifully, rooting him on the pavements and edgelands of the capital – his record is one of the great London listening experiences and would be an extremely worthy winner tonight.

This parish’s Dave Simpson recently ranked all of the previous Mercury winners in order of true greatness – for him, No 1 is the very first winner, Primal Scream’s Screamadelica. Check out his selection below. James Blake is way too low down imo.

Every Mercury prize-winning album – ranked!

Arctic Monkeys perform One Point Perspective in a specially recorded live performance as they continue their tour in their home city of Sheffield, Alex Turner now shorn of his Bob-from-Twin-Peaks do. Ah, let me count the ways I love this song – it could have been performed in the abandoned Vegas of Blade Runner 2049, or perhaps a working men’s club in the Red Riding trilogy. Turner grabs a guitar for a solo like a man with something brand new to say, then gets rid like he’s said it all before. Because of the way it conjures a complete world of semi-ironic razzle-dazzle, I think of all the albums on this shortlist, this will be the one that really endures, for all its occasional longeurs.

In her beautiful silvery beehive, Lily Allen performs Apples, a really smart choice – a magically minimal album track looking back sadly at the honeyed days of “staying in bed all day having sex and smoking fags”, and apologising for the breakdown of that relationship. Bed death, money issues, booze – the issues stack up, but the song never gets maudlin thanks to its simple syncopated guitar line keeping it up in the air. Lesser songwriters would have smothered this in strings or backing vocalists, but Allen knows that her brand of candour doesn’t require any of that. Certain nominees could learn a lot from it.

Nadine Shah, with an incredible thousand-yard stare, plays a blistering version of Out the Way. Her band are reminiscent of PJ Harvey’s bunch of burly blues-rockers, or the Bad Seeds, but their crunchy rhythms are full of post-punk fury. Shah swaggers like a boxer as she wraps her mic cord around her neck, looking close to laughter, tears or madness at the song’s close. The night’s most focused and furious performance.